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SUPPORTING vulnerable people move to new homes during the pandemic should continue to be a priority, Housing Minister Christopher Pinche announced as new guidance for social landlords was published yesterday. The guidance makes clear that essential moves should continue over this period, where it can be done in line with social distancing guidance. This includes domestic abuse victims who may be...

NEW record for longest period of coal-free electricity generation in Britain has been confirmed by National Grid ESO. Coal power has been offline since 00:00 on Friday 10 April 2020, and since then the UK has seen more than 1 terawatt hour of solar power put on the grid in that period – enough to boil water for over 25...

THE SPANISH government has prepared two draft laws to help energy-intensive industrial consumers receive state aid and ease some of the burden of high costs of electricity, while supporting renewables development through power purchase agreements (PPAs). The proposed regulation defines an energy-intensive consumer as an industrial sector company that has consumed more than 1 GWh annually for at least two of...

THE GB Electricity Market celebrated its 30th birthday earlier this month and ICON marked the occasion with a feature that shared a brief timeline of electricity trading. As part of the article, we introduced four weekly features where Nigel Cornwall will be reflecting on the lessons of the past and what these could mean for the trading arrangements going forward. Nigel...

MEMBERS of the Scottish Parliament, business leaders and newly enrolled university students may be asked to take mandatory climate change studies if plans currently under consideration are adopted. The module and workshop-based studies would help arm them with facts and knowledge to make urgent changes to society as it emerges from COVID-19 lockdown. The course was devised by experts at the...

RESEARCHERS have pinpointed the origin of defects that sap the performance of next-generation solar technology in a new international study. A multi-institutional collaboration, co-led by scientists at the University of Cambridge and Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, has identified the source of efficiency-limiting defects in potential materials for next-generation solar cells and LEDs. In the last decade, perovskites...

A TEAM of researchers from the University of Oxford is calling for households to download a new app, which aims to improve our electricity use and capture a unique look at life in the lockdown. The current social distancing, to protect people from catching and spreading the corona virus, presents a perfect opportunity to capture unique data. By studying one day’s data...

THE CITY of Munich utility, Stadtwerke Muenchen, is using geothermal energy to generate cooling with absorption chillers at their new heat plant. So far the city has three cooling centres but with increasing demand, the company is now investing 80 million euros (around 88 million USD) in construction of both generation and necessary network connections. Helge-Uve Braun, Technical Director at Stadtwerke...

EIGHT utility networks have come together to give a £500,000 boost to local Community Foundations across the south of England and Scotland during the coronavirus pandemic. Working together, the companies have quickly provided funding for local Community Foundations to boost community resilience on the frontline. Dubbed the Utility Networks Partnership, the partnership consists of SGN, UK Power Networks, Southern Water, Thames Water,...

THE OUTPUT of solar energy systems is highly dependent on cloud cover and a new method has been reported for estimating cloud optical properties using data from recently launched satellites by American Institute of Physics. While weather forecasting can be used to predict the amount of sunlight reaching ground-based solar collectors, cloud cover is often characterised in simple terms, such...